Assistant professor Samantha DiRosa will give a presentation and poetry reading at "Geo-Aesthetics in the Anthropocene," a conference sponsored by the International Association for Environmental Philosophy from May 24-26 at Salisbury University in Maryland.
The presentation explores a developing body of work that is part of a larger collaborative project titled Gathering Dust: Sediment/Sentiment, with poet and landscape theorist Jolie B. Kaytes. The project integrates poetry and photographs to convey layered narrative regarding geology, memory, and human occupation of the landscape.
Inspired by the study of landforms (geomorphology), the project uses the concept of sedimentation to explore issues of sentimentality. In linking sediment and sentiment, the project extends the language of science to reveal how humans experience and remember the ground; it examines how people inhabit and are products of landscape processes. Gathering Dust translates the vocabulary of science into the vocabulary of lived moments and encourages inventive travel and reflection between science and art, between geology and emotion, and between landscape and memory.
“Geoaesthetics in the Anthropocene” is the second in a new series of biennial summer conferences initiated by the IAEP, the first of which took place at the University of Oregon in summer 2008. Conferences are to be open to a wide range of scholars in the humanities, arts and sciences, as well as making use of the particular location in which they are held to offer field trips or other learning opportunities focusing on environmental themes.